Cross-school program will tap into the best of Tufts

The Provost’s Office is launching a new cross-school initiative, the University Seminar, in which faculty from at least two Tufts schools will team-teach a course on a pressing societal problem, such as AIDS or climate change, from the perspective of multiple disciplines.

Undergraduates in Arts & Sciences and Engineering, as well as students from Tufts’ graduate and health sciences schools, will be able to enroll and receive credit for the course. The end product will be a collaborative, student-authored, web-based summary of knowledge and research.

The program will begin in the 2008-09 academic year.

“I am enthusiastic about launching the University Seminar because it embodies so many of the goals that we have for Tufts,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha. “As a student-centered research university, we need to continually challenge ourselves to live up to what that promises, by leveraging the latent synergies of our unique array of schools and disciplines,” he said. “I am hoping that the seminar will not only inspire cross-disciplinary collaboration, but also lead to innovations in teaching and active learning.”

Faculty who are interested in proposing a seminar for the 2008-09 academic year need to submit a letter of interest by Friday, September 28. You’ll find more detailed information and be able to download a request for applications from the Provost’s Office website: http://provost.tufts.edu/1172048132183/Provost-Page-prov2w_1174562916192.html.

This story appeared in the September 2007 issue of the Tufts Journal.